


In a Scruffy Flat on Baker Street

by texadian



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Declarations Of Love, F/M, Fluff, I Love You, Post-The Final Problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 02:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9362876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/texadian/pseuds/texadian
Summary: Sherlock and Molly have unfinished business they need to attend to following Sherlock's return from Sherrinford.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My unbeta-ed rendition of the scene following TFP.

Of the 52 odd weeks of the year, Molly Hooper spent at least half of them angered or frustrated because of Sherlock. In the events following Sherlock’s drug relapse and near death at the hands of Culverton Smith, that number had gone up two-fold. On her first Monday back to work since Sherlock’s phone call, Molly had decided that the majority of this week would not be spent harping over her friend’s manipulative and confusing actions, but on the research journal article she was preparing to submit by months ends. Unfortunately, the moment she stepped into the break room at lunch, the odds of her succeeding at this dropped significantly. 

“Oh, Molly.” 

She could recognize the voice of the overly chipper, teeth-rotting Julie from third floor anywhere. 

Molly forced a smile then turned to face the obstetrician.

“You work with that detective, Holmes, don’t you?”

She knew very well that Molly did and if Molly were one to make assumptions, she’d also guess that Julie was jealous. 

“Yes, I do.” Molly emphasized the present tense of the word and nodded.

“Then you’ve heard about another one of those dodgy gas leaks at his home, eh?”

Molly tried to hide her sour expression, but there looking back at her on the screen of Julie’s mobile was an article by The Sun that read  _Famous Detective’s Home Blown to Bits: Foul play or another experiment gone wrong?_

Molly snatched the mobile from her coworker’s hand and scanned the short article in less than a minute. 

“You know it’s gotta be another cover up when even The Sun knows they’re lying about the circumstances.”

Molly nodded. 

“Did you not know?” Julie asked with her lips sucked into a sweet smile. 

Molly shook her head. 

“I’m afraid he’s refrained to tell me this time.”

“Oh, well—” 

Molly cut her off, turning on her heel and pushing the doors to the break room open in a dramatic fashion. 

 

“Where have you been staying?” she asked, before letting Sherlock pick up properly on the other end. 

“Wha—”

“I know there was an explosion at Baker St. last week, Sherlock. Where have you been staying?”

She had suspicions that somehow the explosion at Baker St. and his weird phone call were related, but that wasn’t her main concern at the moment. In fact, there were many theories that she’d conjured up in her head by now. 

“I’ve been at an undisclosed location, Molly. You know my brother, always so concerned with the details following a case.”

“You’ve been staying at Mycrofts’?” she asked incredulously. 

“Of course not,” Sherlock replied through the receiver, “He’s got me put up at this insanely overpriced hotel in the city. Seems there’s no sum too large when it comes to security or high-fat indulgences.”

“Sherlock!” 

She has no patience for his familial grievances. 

“Mm?”

“I have some of your things at my place still. Where will you be staying tonight so I can drop them off for you. God knows what you’ll get up to without some of your books or chem supplies.”

Silence on the other end. 

“Sherlock?”

“Molly, I just need to say—”

“No. I don’t need to hear anything about your case right now. Just tell me where to bring your things… I don’t need the pettiness. I don’t need to know.”

“—But Molly…”

“I have five theories,” she began, speaking into her mobile clutched in one hand. 

She was still in the hall on the ground floor at Barts, so she tried to keep her voice down.

“Theory one,” she spoke, resisting her body’s need to tremble at the thought. “It was a game—an experiment as you said—and you won. You got me to admit those three words, no matter the cost.”  
  
“Molly—”

“Theory two: A case. You were undercover. Simple. Plain.

“Theory three: A case. More complicated, though. You needed me to say those words to save your life.”

“Theory four—”

“Molly. Please—”

“Location, Sherlock.”

“Baker St. I’ll be there tonight. If I’m not there, Mrs. Hudson can let you in.”

“Thank you.”

He wanted to say more, but she hung up immediately.  

 

Amidst the darkness of the street and bustling commuters following the 5 pm rush, 221b looked like a pirate ship among the rows of houses and businesses along Baker St. A large tarp stretched between the leveled windows and fragments of wall remaining on the front exterior of the 1st floor. It flapped and billowed in the wind, snapping every time a gust would would catch in its swells. Sherlock wasn’t home yet, so Molly knocked on the front door and waietd for Mrs. H.

It didn’t take long for the older woman to answer and greeted Molly with a smile. 

“Moving in already?” Mrs. Hudson asked, glancing at the suitcases on the ground behind Molly. 

“Oh, no. This is just some of Sherlock’s things. Figured he might be missing a few necessities after that—”

“—Gas leak?” Mrs. Hudson supplied. 

Molly smiled with a slight raise of her brows. 

“Yes, the gas leak.”

 

Inside, the bottom floor, didn’t look too bad. There were holes in the ceiling where projectiles from the floor above had lodged into the wallpaper in the foyer and burn marks along the molding.

“If I were a much less forgiving person,” Mrs. Hudson began, “I wouldn’t put up with that leaky gas pipe Sherlock insists on keeping around.”

Molly’s forehead wrinkled and she went along with Mrs. Hudson’s rant. 

“But I do forgive and shall forgive again.” She smiled and patted the suitcase. “Better not be anymore leaky pipes in here.”

Molly shook her head. 

“No. Nothing quite as dangerous anyway.”

Mrs. Hudson produced a light chuckle, before padding back to her room. 

“Nice to see you, Molly. Don’t be shy to ask me for a ride if Sherlock has you traveling out to hell’s half acre again.”

Moly didn’t know what to say to this, so she just hummed and picked up the case to take up stairs. The first steps up to the landing were mostly undamaged, but the second set had planks missing and a few singed along the edges. Molly hopped over a precarious one, balancing in the frame underneath, and stepped into 221b.

The place was a mess. A pigsty. It looked like a bomb had hit it. Molly shoved some debris away at her feet and set the case down on the floor. The room was quiet and empty. All electrical devices were either destroyed or had been unplugged when the fire had been put out. Molly searched around until she found the framework of an unidentifiable piece of furniture and sat down on it. Ash littered its surface, but it seemed to be quite stable. 

After minutes squatted down on top it, Molly opened the case on the floor and sifted through its belongings. There was a pile of his shirts she’d kept in her closet and even a spare robe. Wrapped in socks and pants, she’d included a few basic labware and chemist supplies in case he got bored, and at the bottom, a handful of books she knew he liked to peruse. 

She was just about to leave, tired of waiting around, when his figure emerged from the shadows of his kitchen is an over exaggerated manner. 

“Molly.”

His voice was lower than normal. An unnecessary product of his entrance into the room. 

“You were right… In a way,” he admitted when he’d made it far enough into the room that she could see the outlines of his face. 

“It was theory three.”

Molly stood and folder her arms in front of her chest. The sleeves of her jumper stretched against her elbows, but still, she stood unwavering. She wasn’t sure if she was pleased that she’d been right or upset that someone had used her to get to Sherlock. Successfully used, she had to admit. 

“Almost theory three,” he corrected. 

Molly lowered her arms and and touched her chin with one hand. 

“It was me, wasn’t it? I was in danger. Wasn’t I? I needed to say those words to save myself. That’s why you sounded so desperate.”

Sherlock’s eye twitched at her last word, but he nodded anyway. 

“Huh.” Molly frowned, but didn’t seem too upset over the news. 

“What kind of weirdo would do that? Besides him anyway?” Molly muttered, walking around the room, stepping over burnt books and shriveled pieces of of fabric. 

She didn’t expect him to reply. It did sound like a high profile case. So when he did, she’s stopped in her tracks. 

“My sister, actually.”

Molly’s eyes followed up from his dusty shoes to the anguish flooding back to his face. He tried to laugh it off. He shrugged, but even Sherlock Holmes wasn’t strong enough to push through this monster. He told Molly about the youngest sibling. Told her the truth about Redbeard and just like that, he was back in his childhood home, alone and confused. 

In the barely lit room, his head wass spinning, trying to grasp onto anything solid. The floor wasn’t grounding and even Molly’s eyes were too dim to hold onto. His arms instinctively spread out beyond his waist and he shuffled amidst the daze. 

Then there were fingers. Slender fingers. They wrapped—no—cupped his chin, scraped against the stubble forming along his jaw bone. They were strong, holding his whole body up, keeping him from collapsing to the Earth below. They were attached to a woman. A most wonderful and caring woman and she had something to say to him, because those eyes—those eyes that he couldn’t find before—they were just inches from his own. 

“Regardless of your past and present, I do love you, Sherlock.”

He focused harder on her, trying not to stray to her reddened cheeks or the way her collarbone rose above the pale skin of her neck. 

“Don’t for a second think you are unloved,” she continued.

She smiled, her got wide, and her brows lifted up to the wrinkles in her forehead. She dipped her head lower and without needing to form the words and say them aloud, asked, “you good now?”

It took him a second to nod and another second to process his own response, but before Moly had a chance to take it all in, he leaned forward and pressed a long overdue kiss on her lips. The kiss was a catalyst. It spurred a quick reaction from both. It had its dips and rises—back and forth pulls. Legs tangled up with each other and the rubble between shoes on the floor. 

It is stupid that until now, Sherlock had never calculated the degree of difficulty in kissing someone of a substantial height difference. His predicament had left the two bent over, with Sherlock’s arm snug against her back and Molly’s feet barely on the ground to support her. With quick thinking, she searched the area with her feet, looking for her makeshift seat from before. It was still sitting there, barely six inches off the ground, but served its purpose well. Molly stepped onto it—without give in its structure—and met Sherlock’s kisses at equal height. 

While this gave Molly new found strength and force, Sherlock seemed to melt into her. He filled the spaces between her arms and her sides and the crooks in her neck and chest. He was so determined to fill every empty space that before long, his hands found perch just below her hips and picked Molly up from the stool. 

“Sherlock.” Molly patted her hands against his shoulders, now free from his hair, until he’d set her down again. 

At first he was cautious, slowly releasing her from is grasp. Then a car passed on the street outside and for a second he could make out the goofy grin on her face and the way her fingers curved over the growing look of awe.

“Same,” he said with his head bowed. 

They both laughed nervously and Molly stepped down to the floor to pick up the open suitcase. 

“Molly,” he stopped her from continuing and held her fingers wrapped around the handles of the case. “If it wasn’t clear before, I also, very much love you.”

A calculated expression overtook his unguarded eyes and he pointed between themselves. 

“I… love you,” he said again. “And I’m not just saying that because I thought you were going to die and I would lose my chance at saying it and being happy and why do you have my pants in this case?”

They both looked down at the suitcase and Molly smirked. 

“You left them at my flat,” she responded with a piercing smile. 

He raised a pair to his nose. 

“And you washed them?” 

He gave another sniff. 

“They smell like you. My pants smell like you, Molly.”

He stood there, buffering, inhaling one more time. 

“That’s not bad, is it?” she asked. 

“For heaven’s sake, no! I should have had you washing my clothes long before. They smell amazing.”

His grin spread out across his sharp cheeks and softened the edges. 

“You’re giving Mrs. Hudson some pointers, next time,” he continued, walking down the hall towards his room. 

“It’s just the detergent I get from Tesco,” she tried to say, but he wouldn’t listen.

“It has to be something else.”

He motioned for her to follow as he got to his door. Molly obliged and lifted the case till it sat comfortably in her arms. She leaned down and smelled one of his pants and shrugged.

“You sure it’s not the fabric softener?” he asked. 

Molly licked her lips, smiling mischievously, and smelled a shirt for good measure. 

“I can’t think of any other explanation.”

**Author's Note:**

> I realize now that I have some weird obsession with laundry in my fics.


End file.
